Workers in Vietnam’s Samsung town feel sting of production cuts as global spending slows
- The South Korean tech giant has scaled back production at the Thai Nguyen plant where the company churns out half of its smartphone output
- ‘My salary was cut by half last month because I just worked four days and spent the remaining week doing nothing,’ a worker says
America’s largest warehouse market is full and major US retailers such as Best Buy and Target Corp warn of slowing sales as shoppers tighten their belts after early Covid-era spending binges.
The effect is acutely felt in Vietnam’s northern province of Thai Nguyen, one of Samsung’s two mobile manufacturing bases in the country where the world’s largest smartphone vendor churns out half of its phone output, according to the Vietnam government.
Samsung, which shipped around 270 million smartphones in 2021, says the campus has the capacity to make around 100 million devices a year, according to its website.
“We are going to work just three days per week, some lines are adjusting to a four-day work week instead of six before, and of course no overtime is needed,” Pham Thi Thuong, a 28-year-old worker at the plant said.